By Mark Kennedy, ACSI Canada
As enrollment declines continue to plague Christian schools across the continent we sometimes look to churches for support and for students. But the response is often discouraging and occasionally downright frigid. We are sometimes made to feel like sideshow performers blundering onto the stage at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre during a performance of Hamlet. We feel out of place, not wanted. One part of the body seems to be saying to another “I don’t need you!” and the whole 
body is suffering as a result.
Has the North American church not noticed the stream of young people leaving its hallowed halls permanently? Do pastors and other church leaders never stop to consider that the reason their own children are turning from the faith may be because 2 to 3 hours of weekly Christian training is no match for 35 hours of educational indoctrination in a secular worldview?
Well, we could respond to those many non supportive evangelical churches by isolating ourselves from them, at least in our thinking and too often we have done exactly that. After all we didn’t reject them- to begin with at least.
But that kind of approach is self destructive in the long run because of one uncomfortable truth – we are them. The Lord has not designed the body to be divided and we need to show, not just say, that we are a part of the church.
Along the lines of ‘showing it’ here is an idea from the grade 11 class at Brantford Christian Collegiate : extend the World Concerns Conference to serve kids in Christian schools, public schools and church youth groups and let students from our Christian high schools run it. I think we’ll give it a try for the 2009/2010 school year.
Working with student planning committees we will aim for 2 or 3 localized World Concerns Conferences in Ontario and the same number in the Maritimes. It is just one idea and it may not work but it certainly has merit. And it begins to show the church that we are on their side.
What else can we do to show that we are a legitimate part of the church? If we need ideas maybe the best source would be our senior students, like the grade 11 class at BCC. It is worth asking.
1 comment:
At Prairie Christian Academy we are trying to build connections with our local churches realizing that it is the Church, not a school, that sends out/commissions people for service. So a couple weeks before our Colombia missions teams have left (Feb 08 and 09), we invited the local pastors to attend our "commissioning chapel." At the end of chapel when the students/staff were officially prayed for/laid hands on, it was the pastors who sent them out.
A second idea we are working on is in relation to an upcoming Athletics Banquet. Each year we have a keynote speaker for the banquet, and yet often that speaker does not get much chance to speak to students. This year we are hoping to arrange the schedule so that the speaker can share at the banquet (Sat night) and then also share on Sunday night at all-church youth night. Again, you can see that we are blessed to have a group of churches/ministerial association that works together well. And though the individual pastors and have varying levels of support for Christian Education, they appreciate we are not trying to make our Christian school into a youth group.
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